Bluish (6 page)

Dreenie watched her face. She’d been lost in the give-and-take of the class. All of them, around Bluish, listening.
That couldn’t have happened two weeks ago,
she thought. Bluish continued, “The letters mean more, like a miracle, but not in the game. The first seven kids get ten peanuts. Here.” She motioned for Dreenie.

Surprised, Dreenie held herself very calm as she took handfuls of peanuts from the bag and chose seven kids to have them. They were all being quiet, interested.

“Now, each player put a peanut in the middle—that’s the pot.”

They did.

“First player, spin the dreidel.”

Bluish chose Tuli. “Like this?” Tuli asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. She spun the dreidel top.

They watched it spin, grinning at its whirl.

“Okay, when it stops, we see what face of the dreidel is up,” Bluish said. The dreidel fell on its side.

“The letter
hey
is up. Tuli gets half of the pot,” Bluish said.

“Why does she get half?” Dassan wanted to know.

“Because
hey
stands for half, get it?”

“What does
nun
stand for?” Dreenie asked.

“Nun
stands for
nisht,
or nothing. And the player does nothing.”

“Wow.”

“Gimel
stands for
gantz,
or all,” Bluish told them. “And the player who gets
gimel
gets everything in the pot.”

“Ooh, I want that one!” Paula said. Others agreed.

Bluish continued:
“Shin
stands for
shtel,
to put in. The one who gets
shin
has to add two peanuts to the pot.”

“Uh-uh!” kids said. They didn’t want that one.

“When there’re no peanuts in the pot, or only one, each player puts in a peanut. And that’s how you do the game,” Bluish said. “When one person wins everything, the game is over.”

They played the game for a while. Everyone got to play. Shouts of
“Shin! Shin!”
And “I got
gimel,
watch out!” It was fun. When they had to stop, they all applauded. It was time to do their math.

As they opened their books, Ms. Baker told them other things about the dreidel. “There’s more to it than the game,” she said. She moved about the room, ready to help them if they needed it. Talking: “What does the spinning dreidel remind you of?” she asked.

“Earth!” Dreenie said.

“I was going to say that!” Mary Beth said.

“The sun,” someone else said.

“That, too,” Ms. Baker said. “The dreidel shows us the changing of seasons as the sun shifts. Winter, spring, summer, fall, as the earth spins on its axis.”

“Neat,” Dreenie said. And smiled at Bluish. But Bluish had dozed off. She’d worn herself out.

“Class,” Ms. Baker said. She put a finger to her lips and spoke softly. “Remember to bring your field trip permissions on Friday. Monday we’ll go to the Natural History Museum. It’s our last field trip and the last few days of school until your winter vacation.”

Christmas holidays. Change of seasons,
Dreenie thought.
Will she still be Bluish in the spring? Wish I knew more. She looks like she hasn’t one hair on her whole skin. That’s one thing. And sometimes she gives this look like she’s going to scream. Like she’s really mad.

“Its proper name is American Museum of Natural History,” Bluish said.

They looked at her. “Hi!” Dreenie said, startled to see Bluish was awake.

“You’re back with us?” Ms. Baker said, smiling. Bluish had dozed only a few minutes.

“Going to see the dinosaurs! Yeah!” Some of the kids yelled, acting up.

“Class, we’re going to see an exhibit very different from dinosaurs.”

Bluish muttered something. Perhaps she meant for Dreenie to hear her. Dreenie was close enough. It sounded like, “I get to go, too!”

I
T WAS
F
RIDAY AFTERNOON
, and Bluish had gone to the doctor. They became more worried about her each time she went. Students stood around, looking at Ms. Baker. Like Dreenie, they didn’t know exactly how they were feeling. It upset them when Bluish got sick. Each time she left suddenly for the doctor, they feared she wouldn’t come back.

Ms. Baker could tell, and began talking to them. “Natalie’s mom doesn’t want you to feel sorry for Natalie,” Ms. Baker told them. “She wants you to understand that Natalie’s been very sick.”

It was then Dreenie thought to say, “I want to know more.”

Kids said, “We want to know more!”

Ms. Baker frowned, pressing her lips firmly together. She went to the blackboard. “Natalie has ALL,” she said, writing it on the board, “which is Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. It’s a serious and painful disease.”

Kids left their seats. Slowly, they came up to the front; Ms. Baker was the lamplight they were drawn to like moths. Hearing her talk about Bluish made them stop and think about this worry they’d been having. And now they could show it, they could let it out.

Ms. Baker put her chalk down and reached out to them. Dreenie took her hand a moment. Tuli had Ms. Baker by the arm. Other students did the same, when Dreenie and Tuli let go. Milling around Ms. Baker, they all watched her expression. They knew every line of her face; knew every smile and stern reproach.

“Natalie still must take medicines,” Ms. Baker went on. “But once she’s gone through the program, she has an eighty-five to ninety percent chance of being cured. So please, her mother asks that you treat her the way
you
would want to be treated. And try not to feel sorry for her. Class,” Ms. Baker added, “I want you to know I’m proud of you, the way you’ve come to regard Natalie.”

“But …” Dreenie began. “But what does that mean? Eighty-five to ninety percent. Where’s the rest? That’s not a hundred percent.”

Ms. Baker spoke clearly, yet quietly. “It means that if Natalie goes from the start of her treatment through five years without a relapse, she’s probably forever cured.”

They stared at Ms. Baker.

“Five whole years?” Jamal said. “Wow … that’s … that’s long! We’ll be fifteen!”

“What’s a relapse?” Dassan wanted to know.

“A relapse is a restart of an illness that’s been in remission—that’s been halted.” Ms. Baker took up the chalk and wrote
Relapse
and
Remission.

Their questions came one after the other. “But when did … did it start?” Dreenie asked.

Ms. Baker never answered her directly. She looked around at all of them.

“Sit down, class,” she told them. “We’ll talk about it.”

They sat down. But soon they were up out of their seats again. Ms. Baker was used to them. They needed to talk, get close, wander away, listening, and come back to the front again.

One student, Linda, was the first to comment. “I feel bad. But I feel funny, I don’t know. I guess I can’t help it. I feel sorry for her.”

Dreenie sat and squirmed.
All of them, talking about Bluish. Was it talking behind her back? Is it like Us against Her? Us together and Her by herself? But she’s the sick one! And we’re not.
Dreenie had the worst feeling of being afraid. Of what, she didn’t know.

Yes, I do. Of me, getting sick,
she thought. Her stomach flopped a moment.

“Class,” Ms. Baker said. “Does it make you uncomfortable to talk about it?”

“Yes!” several students piped up. “Yeah, it does!”

One said, “I get scared I’ll catch it. I know you can’t—can you?”

“No, don’t worry,” Ms. Baker said.

“You don’t know how to act about it,” a boy, Nicholas, said.

Jamal said, “You think she’s going to be just like us. Only, you do something, playing, not to hurt her. Her mouth turns down. She gets all sad. And can get mean, man! Shoot, I stay away from her.”

“It seems to me you all are learning about a student who is your classmate and who has been very ill,” Ms. Baker said. “What else have you learned?”

“Well, Bluish doesn’t like fooling-around play, that’s for sure,” Paula said.

Tuli said, “She told me once she di’nt want to get bruised when kids got rowdy. ‘A bruise is bloodletting. I used to bleed and bleed,’ she said. I kid you non! S’what she tole us, di’nt she, Dreenie?”

Dreenie nodded. It was true, and Bluish had told Dreenie even more.

Ms. Baker said, “Tulithia, Natalie was telling you that when the illness started, she didn’t have tiny blood platelets. And we all have to have them. Platelets plug the blood vessels and stop the bleeding. It must have been scary—to bleed and not stop.”

Dassan raised his hand. “What stopped it, then? She don’t bleed now.”

“Blood transfusions,” Ms. Baker said. “Medicines that worked.”

Tentatively, Dreenie raised her hand. They all felt she was the one closest to Bluish.

Ms. Baker, all of them, waited. Dreenie sighed and finally said, “‘Chemo is like dying.’ That’s what Blu—I mean, Natalie, told me. She said what made her faint was this needle they put in her back into her hipbone. She said it was a long, hollow needle that drew out the bone marrow.”

“E-ew!” kids murmured. “Yuckies!”

“Class,” Ms. Baker said, shushing them.

Bluish had told Dreenie things in bits and pieces and not all at one time. Dreenie remembered, though. Doing their work, talking low now and then.

“That’s what the cure is about,” Ms. Baker said. “It’s about having no sick cells inside her bones. In the marrow.” She wrote on the board:
Marrow
—
site of blood cell reproduction.

Dreenie nodded. “She said they often have to stick the needle way in and draw out bone marrow to look at it and check it.” It was like Bluish was in her head. She could hear her.
“That’s what kills
y
ou. It hurts so bad. It sucks, man! Like sucking on a straw. It sucks your insides out. It sucks out your light.
” Dreenie didn’t feel she should tell them. It was something just so deep of Bluish. What she did tell them was, “She said she didn’t want us talking about her illness. And here we are …” Dreenie looked down at her hands.

“I can understand her not wanting that,” Ms. Baker said. “I’ll take the blame. I hoped you all would learn to respect what it means to be well. To be healthy, the way you are. So that you will see more clearly what Natalie must go through.” She erased everything on the board.

“I got a sore throat,” Manny the K said.

“Oh, Manny!” Ms. Baker said.

“Am I going to die?”

Ms. Baker looked perturbed. “Stop it now,” she told him, sternly. “I’ll send you to the nurse if your throat is really bad.”

“It’s okay!” he said, alarmed. Looking ashamed of himself.

Kids snickered. Mr. Baker said that was enough, and to get back to work.

Friday evening, after Tuli left, after Dreenie’s mom and dad were home, she called Bluish. She remembered to say Bluish’s name properly.

Bluish’s mom answered the ring.

“Is Natalie there? It’s Dreenie, from school.”

“Hi, Dreenie. Wait a minute.”

Dreenie held her breath. She tried to tell if Mrs. Winburn was upset with her. But she couldn’t tell. Why would she be? Dreenie thought,
Don’t make up stuff.

Bluish got on the phone. “Hi,” she said.

“You sound okay,” Dreenie said.

“Why shouldn’t I?” she answered.

“Well, you weren’t in school.”

“I had the doctor’s.”

“Yeah, I know. Ms. Baker told us.” Instantly she was sorry she’d mentioned it.

There was a pause. “You all were talking about me,” Bluish said.

“We were worried,” Dreenie said. “Ms. Baker told us so we wouldn’t worry.”

“You worried about me? I mean, all of you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dreenie said.

Silence on the other end. “I’m okay,” Bluish said, finally. There was a tremble in her voice.

They talked more. Dreenie told her ordinary things that happened in school. And told her that her dad and Willie had found out about a fun thing at this middle school not far from Bethune. It was an African Market. “I mean, a whole market they’ll have—it’s two days after Christmas. You want to go? Tuli’s going with me and my dad. She doesn’t have anyone to go with. Willie’s going with some friends.”

“Well,” Bluish said, “maybe. My dad usually has to drive when I go someplace like that. I can’t walk like anybody.”

“I know,” Dreenie said. “It’s after Christmas, on the twenty-seventh.”

“I’ll have to ask,” Bluish said.

“Are you coming to school Monday? Remember, the field trip?”

“I know. I didn’t forget. Wha’dya think?”

They talked a while; then Bluish said, “Thanks for calling.”

“See ya,” Dreenie said. She wanted to go over, to see how Bluish was doing over the weekend. Maybe Bluish wouldn’t feel good, though, and wouldn’t want her to see. She’d say no, you can’t come over. So Dreenie hung up the phone without asking.

Over the weekend, Dreenie visited Tuli. Well, Tuli came and got her.

Dreenie’s mom sounded cautious with them. Telling Dreenie, “Now, I want you to stay in Tuli’s house, you hear, Dreenie? I don’t want you walking to the grocery or to the pharmacy. It’s Sunday, everybody’s home from work, out and around …”

“Uh-uh, Missus,” Tuli said. “Too cold. Nobody standing out or sitting playing chess and dominoes in this weather.”

“The more reason to stay inside,” Dreenie’s mom said. “Empty streets.”

Dreenie sighed. The streets were never empty. But she knew why her mom was fearful about Tuli’s neighborhood. It wasn’t so bad; besides, Tuli was her friend. Dreenie guessed she really was. And sometimes you had to go visit whatever kind of friend you had, at her house.

“Well, can I at least go to afternoon services with her and her granmom?”

“That’s all right, you two with Gilla.”

“Well, good, at last!” Dreenie said. “We get to do something.”

“Dreenie,” her mom said, “you guys get to do a lot.”

Dreenie wore a yellow wool sweater and a gray skirt with gray tights and black boots. She wore her winter jacket, which was burnt-gold color. It was hooded and warm.

They went uptown east around the park. Tuli’s building was right there, halfway in on 112th Street. The halls were only a little warmer than the outside. Dreenie could hear people in their apartments. Radios. Television. There was no one like Mr. Palmer to greet them as they came in. No Christmas tree.